Morning Visits

Today we visited three small companies.

Leche Aasada (cooked milk): This lady is 71 years old. She wakes up every morning in time to buy milk at the market. Apparently if you don't wake up and go first thing in the morning, you miss your chance to buy milk. She prepares her dessert to sell on the streets during the morning hours, goes to a bakery where she pays for use of their oven, and then walks the street selling her goods. She sells it nice and hot, right out of the oven. We met her father, who is still alive at a whoppin' 104 years of age.

Laundromat: Most of the laundromats we're used to in the states are full of coin-operated washer and dryers. Here, it's different. You drop your clothes off, and they will wash, dry, and fold them for you. Most laundromats here only have one washer and many of them will simply hang-dry your clothes. With the loan the owner bought three new machines to increase his capacity. He was super happy with a great smile.

Phone/internet: A lady in the ward who taught my sunday school class on sunday is about to open a place where people can come and use her phones for international or long-distance calls. She has rented a little place along a busy street and has little cubbies for the people to go into, but is waiting on the telephone company to put her line in before she starts. She thinks she will be successful because there aren't any other "locutorios" nearby.

We came home and wrote up suggestions for all of the individual companies we have visited so far. We will give these suggestions to Eagle Condor and they will work with the companies after we leave. Most of the individual suggestions relate to marketing and service. Although the truth is we have found that they don't keep track of their costs, and this is a real problem. They have no idea what the costs of the materials are, their profit margin of different items, etc. With the money they earn from selling their goods or services they pay all of their bills (both personal and business), feed themselves, and then buy more inventory/supplies. One suggestion we're going to make is that Eagle Condor does a training to teach them how to pay themselves a salary, and separate their personal money from their business income.

Tonight we're taking our little family out to pizza :) Yum.